Samsung Galaxy S 4G Android Smartphone Review

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Performance Testing - Web Browsing

Browsing the Web is certainly a key feature of any smartphone, so we also conducted some formal speed tests to see how well the Samsung Galaxy S 4G compares to some of today's hottest smartphones.

In the Xtremelabs test, the Samsung Galaxy S 4G achieved download speeds that are right in line with other 4G networks. Upload speeds were a different story in this test. For some reason, they were particularly low when we ran our tests. Over Wi-Fi, however upload speeds were more in line with other devices.

On the BA.net test, the Galaxy S 4G blew the competition out of the water on download speeds when connected to T-Mobile's 4G network. Wi-Fi download speeds were right in line with other devices we've seen. Upload speeds are no longer available from the BA.net test.

The Speedtest.net test shows that T-Mobile's 4G network in combination with the Samsung Galaxy S 4G is slower than Sprint's 4G devices in terms of both download and upload speeds.

Overall, the Samsung Galaxy S 4G didn't perform quite as well in these benchmarks as we would have liked. In our real-world testing, the phone and web browsing felt relatively zippy. Although the scores are lower than we would have liked, we don't feel it's fair to generalize or say this could be a widespread problem. It's possible that T-Mobile's network wasn't providing the best speeds possible in our test location during our test period. Every network has been known to experience glitches from time to time, so we'll give T-Mobile and Samsung some benefit of the doubt on this one, particularly since we enjoyed respectable scores when testing over Wi-Fi.